In The Dark
by maeyan
Summary: In Sakura and the pitch Dark literary festival, Kero-chan basically said that only those with magic knew anything had happened. So what about the other magical people in the room, then?
1. Kinomoto Touya

Okay. It's been about... a year? since I've written CCS. Dunno. But I haven't seen a single fic dealing with what happens to the other magic users when the Dark card activates. And I desperately wanted to know, so I FINALLY sat down and wrote this... Comments are VERY welcome!!! Thanks!  
  
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In The Dark  
  
By Maeyan  
  
Disclaimer: CCS is fully owned and operated by CLAMP. I wouldn't dream of taking it from them, for it would surely shrivel up and die, like this plant at my desk. This story, however, is made up almost entirely from my own imagination.  
  
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1. Touya  
  
He'd never been afraid of the dark. Even as a child he'd known that things were the same whether the light was on or not. Perhaps it was because he saw things in the light that others believed belonged only in the dark? He'd never really given it any thought until now.   
  
Now, when the darkness suddenly surrounding him was so absolute and complete that it wasn't even darkness as he'd ever experienced it. It was more the opposite of light than the absence of it. He reached out and tried to feel the line of the chair ahead of him but there was nothing there. Even his hand was non-existant - and that was what it felt like, he realized, like everything had ceased to exist.   
  
He shuddered for a moment and then closed his mind to the thought, turning to make sure Yuki was okay. He wasn't, or at least he wasn't there. Not only was it not possible to see him, but Yuki's aura had completely disappeared.   
  
"Calm down" he told himself. "Just... OK. Look for Sakura." Feel for the familiar bounce... The golden hues that meant she was healthy, the soft pink edges darkening to magenta that meant she was worrying, the...   
  
He couldn't find it. Any of it. He couldn't find her.   
  
The darkness had swallowed her up; his emotions ran high. This was how he'd realized his mother was gone, he remembered. He cursed under his breath, then relaxed as much as he could and tried again.   
  
Nothing. Absolute nothing. And actually, no one at all. He usually was bombarded with emotions and personalities, but now...   
  
Alone. Truly alone.   
  
Then, for a brief moment, as suddenly as the darkness has come about he felt it... breathe? shudder? He looked about, hoping something was different but everything had settled back into the same void. Then...  
  
"To-ya? It's awfully dark in here. Did something happen to the power?" Yuki's voice came from the space next to him.  
  
He looked for his friend but to no avail. Sighing a ragged breath, he closed his eyes against the nothing. "Yuki. I can't find you. Where are you?"  
  
A small laugh came from the emptiness surrounding him. "Right here, To-ya. Good thing we're not afraid of the dark, huh?"  
  
"This isn't normal darkness, Yuki."  
  
"Ahhh." He could almost feel his friend's understanding smile and it was comforting. "Sakura-chan?"  
  
"Aa."   
  
"Well. I guess we'll have to wait until she fixes it, then."  
  
"I can't find her either, Yuki. I can't find you and I can't find Sakura. No one. There's no one here but me."   
  
There was silence, and Touya cursed again at the darkness.   
  
"Don't worry, Touya." Yuki's voice was suddenly strong and slightly deeper than usual, and Touya let it flow over him, calming him. "Sakura-chan just needs to find the light." 


	2. Tsukishiro Yukito

2. Yuki  
  
It was as if he blinked and suddenly the lights were gone. He couldn't remember what happened, just... one moment Sakura-chan was about to kiss the "princess" awake, Touya was growling his disbelief, and then the next moment he was completely surrounded by darkness.   
  
And yet it wasn't an unfamiliar darkness. He couldn't pin down the why or the how, but he felt almost at home in it and he took a moment to enjoy that feeling before he lost it. It was a fleeting one anymore; his grandparents were spending more time together than with him and he missed them fiercely.   
  
And the darkness made him think of Touya's eyes. How could that be bad?  
  
He pushed his glasses up and smiled. "To-ya? It's awfully dark in here. Did something happen to the power?"   
  
He looked to where his friend had been sitting but the darkness would not yield even to his new glasses. He could hear Touya sigh and wished he could see if his friend was a upset as he sounded. Touya's words confirmed the suspicion: "Yuki. I can't find you. Where are you?"  
  
He gave a small laugh, both at silliness of the question and to comfort his friend. "Right here, To-ya." He replied and reached out his hand. He pulled it back when it passed where Touya's shoulder should have been but wasn't. Maybe the darkness wasn't as much a friend as he'd believed? "Good thing we're not afraid of the dark, huh?" he said as much to comfort himself as to make the joke.  
  
"This isn't normal darkness, Yuki."  
  
Hearing that made him feel better. His perverse mind had already begun to imagine the horrors his grandparents, let alone To-ya, would put him through if he suddenly took to sleeping with a nightlite.   
  
"Ahhh." Not a normal darkness. That meant magic, most likely. And if it was magic, then, "Sakura-chan?"  
  
"Aa." Came the rely and he guessed that the overly protective big brother was concentrating on trying to find the budding young actress in the darkness.   
  
"Well." Sometimes he wondered if To-ya would ever understand that Sakura-chan could take care of herself. He sat back in his chair "I guess we'll have to wait until she fixes it, then."  
  
"I can't find her either, Yuki." Touya's voice sounded calm, but that meant nothing. "I can't find you and I can't find Sakura. No one. There's no one here but me."   
  
Unable to touch or see them, the words never-the-less hung heavy around him and he yearned to simply lean into Touya and take away the fear. He didn't know how to help. He didn't have the ability to always know where someone was or what someone was doing or even if they were hurt. So he didn't know how to help his To-ya deal with the sudden loss of that ability. Touya's curse rang hollow in the darkness.   
  
"Don't worry, Touya." The solid voice flowed from him and he didn't know why it made him suddenly feel so much more... anxious. As if he should be waiting for something. Or someone... "Sakura-chan just needs to find the light." 


	3. Li Syaoran

3. Syaoran  
  
"Be Careful, it's a Clow Card! This is Dark!"  
  
And then she was gone. Had she heard him? He had the horrible feeling she hadn't.   
  
"Dammit!" he cursed aloud, half hoping that someone would hear him and chastise him for using language like that in school. But no one did and considering how small the stage actually was, at least one of the teachers or aides should have heard him in quiet of the dark. But this wasn't normal dark - it was Dark.   
  
He knew it was the Dark. He'd sensed it before SHE had. He'd tried to tell her, to warn her, though god only knew why since she was really only in the way of his destiny...  
  
He needed to get up off the stupid prop bed and capture the damned card. He struggled a moment, reaching into the neck of his dress, then cursed again. In addition to being tricked into the damn dress and wig in the first place (somedays he swore it was like she had powers of her own), he'd allowed Daidouji to convince him he wouldn't need his amulet onstage. His sword was off in the Dark somewhere.   
  
Dammit. Dammit. Dammit.   
  
Did nothing go his way?  
  
He'd gotten to Tomoeda late, only to discover that SHE'd already started collecting the cards. She'd been a rank amateur and yet she'd refused to hand over the cards. Since then he'd watched her grow into the position until he was almost sure that she'd make a formidable opponent if he wasn't careful.   
  
Of course if it came to that, he did have his own magic in addition to the Clow Cards.   
  
Yeah, right. He shuddered as he remembered the look on her face when she'd confronted Firey and then again when she'd used the Firey card against Snow.   
  
As if he hadn't learned the "don't piss off girls" rule early in life?  
  
Maybe she had heard him say it was the Dark card! That was half the battle won, there, right? And maybe the Plushy had told her about the Dark so she'd know what to do next!   
  
He rolled his eyes and shoved his closet-optimism back into the closet.   
  
Yeah, right. And maybe the snow would be warm this year.   
  
But maybe she would be able to handle this. She'd done okay alone with other cards, not knowing anything about them beforehand. And how many had she captured before he'd arrived? She'd be fine.   
  
He waited a few more moments, then impatience won: "Dammit! You're not stupid! Why can't you figure this one out?"   
  
Which really wasn't fair, he admitted as he sat alone in the Dark and brooded. When he'd been given Clow's puzzle that was to prepare him for the capture of Dark, he'd been stumped. And he'd had training for years and was given complete access to Clow's journals as well as any number of magical tomes. SHE still had trouble with basic math and the only magic book she'd opened in her life was the Clow book that started the whole mess.   
  
The darkness flickered. For a moment he could almost make out the outline of a figure standing in front of him. Her. But she'd only just named it, he guessed, since the darkness soon swallowed up again the small pink glimmer of her outline.  
  
Dark was truly the worst card. Not that he understood or liked all of them (and why *did* Clow need a card that could only make flowers?), but Dark he was almost afraid of confronting.   
  
He'd managed to solve the first half of the clue that Clow had left behind. He knew that the only way to capture Dark was to use Light. He knew that. He also knew that while SHE didn't have the Light card, it would be nearby. It had to be because the journals all agreed that Dark was never without Light and Light was always with Dark. One had even suggested that they were meant to be sealed together and he'd wondered at the time if that was even possible. (But with HER it was probably possible. She'd already shown it was possible to use two elemental cards together.)  
  
But the clue to where Light could be found always puzzled him: "Light will hide in the brightest place it can find, and will shine in the Dark where it cannot be seen until it's found."   
  
He grabbed his skirts, and stood, struggling to keep his footing on the not-constructed-for-standing-on prop bed, and pondered the puzzle again. The brightest place - where was the brightest place in the darkness? He tried to think, but the only thing that came to mind was his mother's face the night she'd assured him that her barrier would keep out all the bad things his sisters had convinced he were lurking in the shadows. He shook his head and sighed. He tried again and this time it was HER face that came to mind.   
  
"Dammit." He whined. 


	4. Mizuki Kaho

4. Kaho  
  
Sometimes she knew about things well in advance. Sometimes she was as suprised as everyone else when something happened. But lately - after meeting and then leaving *him* - she'd grown stronger. As if by listening to his side of things she'd absorbed some of him. She had a mission now, no longer just watching as the world floated by with a brief stop to curtsey her way and then continue on without her.   
  
She kept close and watched over the young magicians not because she thought there would be problems, but because she was now a little impatient. She wanted to get to the end and see how it all turned out. Because she really didn't know.   
  
And this situation was a very good example, she thought, as she let her mind fly out into the darkness. She gently touched the minds of the people in the theater who were vaguely aware of something being wrong. She'd been told that the card was effective against those with and those without magic, but in different ways. That was all he'd been able to remember, and her own gifts had only let her know that there would be a few who would need calming. She wasn't shocked, therefore, to find Touya's mind searching in this darkness as well. She could feel him, almost as if he were physically beside her, and she guessed that he was looking for his beloved Sakura-chan. She sent her mind searching in a different direction, but her thoughts were still on her former boyfriend.   
  
Touya. He wasn't at his strongest yet, but she could sense it coiled within him, growing stronger. She wondered what would finally break his full power into being, and felt a small pang of regret for what had happened between them. She'd known almost after their first meeting that they'd part ways soon after, but those months of being together were still a delicious memory...  
  
The darkness shifted. Sakura-chan had apparently solved part of the puzzle. But the darkness did not completely disappear. There was more to do. She only hoped it was actually possible to accomplish.   
  
She'd called home yesterday to tell him she'd dreamt the next capture would be Dark, and he managed to recall another memory - something about an extra trick to capturing the Dark card - the fact that you had to use the Light card. Neither of them knew what cards had been captured already, so they could only hope that they'd activated in the proper order.   
  
"Although you know how perverse he was..." she'd said, holding the receiver close in the early morning light.  
  
"I do remember that much, yes." She'd heard the smile in his voice. "And the cards are intelligent and won't necessarily want to be captured again."  
  
She'd been about to respond when another voice chimed in from his end of the long distance call: "...If they're like /some/ intelligent creatures created with that particular magic, they /would/ be perverse enough to activate in an impossible and illogical order."  
  
"Hey! You mean me, don't you?! Mou! Don't be mean! And what's 'perverse' mean, anyway?"  
  
She'd hung up the phone with a chuckle as his goodbye faded into an amused chiding delivered to the two arguing behind him.  
  
But that was yesterday and they were no closer to a way to help with the capture of the Dark card.   
  
Suddenly there was a small flash of...of... she could only call it existance. And now she could feel Tsukishiro-kun's aura in the room as well, a soft blue-tint to his usual soft green energy. As always he was beside Touya, but when she inspected closer, she realized that there was still a small barrier of darkness between them. She wondered if perhaps Touya had somehow called his friend back into existence - had she underestimated his abilities? Or was it Tsukishiro himself who'd jumped into the world of Dark?   
  
Either of those would explain the sudden blip announcing his presence, a blip that had almost seemed like a candle flickering in the darkness.   
  
Or had he simply always been there and she'd never noticed it because he was always with Touya? But that didn't explain the suddenness of her noticing him. It was as if he'd just now walked into the room. but...   
  
And then she knew. She knew where the Light card was and she knew Tsukishiro-kun's secret. And yet she still did not know how it was all going to end.   
  
"Hurry, Sakura-chan" she whispered. "Find the Light." 


End file.
